I waited too long.

Had I known that Judge John Finley was going to declare Minnesota’s conceal and carry law unconstitutional, I would have taken the training and applied for my permit months ago. Too bad I was busy with other things at the time.

We should be proud that Minnesota is one of 38 states to uphold their citizen’s Second Amendment rights, but detractors of the law sound like a broken record as they keep wondering about the need for it and pressing for its demise. Where, they ask, has the defensive use of guns ever occurred in Minnesota? Well, let’s take a look:

In 2000, Raymond Rask in Britt, Minnesota woke up to find a masked intruder standing over him with a rifle. After firing two shots, the intruder demanded money. Instead, Rask picked up his own rifle and at the sight of the gun, the intruder fled.

In 2001, a woman home alone in Inkster, Minnesota said she would call for help when three men pounded on her door ostensibly after their car became stuck in a snowy ditch. When they broke down her door, she locked herself in her bedroom and said she had a gun. The intruders fled.

In 2002, Harvey Keefe, a 79 year-old veteran, was awakened when someone broke into his Minneapolis home. As the intruder prowled throughout the house, Keefe readied his .38 caliber revolver, and fired when the intruder reached his bedroom. The intruder fled.

In June 2004, a 15-year-old from Askov, Minnesota was being sought as a suspect in the shooting of his father when he was spotted by Matt Gebhart, owner of an auto shop. According to the Star Tribune: “So when the teenager appeared armed with a gun…the three men working at a nearby auto shop – Matt Gebhart, Scott Jorgensen and Brian Volk – knew what to do. They got their guns. Minutes later, they surrounded the boy and talked him into dropping his.”

I think I see a pattern here.

As in other states, the debate here over permit to carry was awash in claims that the Wild West would return, with opponents panicking over the supposed mayhem that such a law might produce. There’s just one problem: none of their dire predictions have come true.

In fact, knowing that an intended victim might be armed is a powerful deterrent to career criminals. According to FBI statistics, right-to-carry states have a 24 percent lower average violent crime rate, a 22 percent lower murder rate, and 37 percent fewer robberies. Furthermore, the five states with the lowest crime rates are all right-to-carry states.

The actions of the good people in places like Askov, Britt, Inkster, and Minneapolis contradict the complaints of those who wonder aloud where the defensive use of guns has occurred in Minnesota, and should lay to rest the unreasonable fears that this law will mean the return of the Wild West.

In 2003, our conceal-and-carry law easily carried the House 88-46, and passed with a vote of 37-30 in the Senate – meaning that it had broad bipartisan support, with a number of rural Democrats voting in support of the measure.

Conceal and carry is up for a vote again this legislative session. I’ll take my safety course and I’ll be ready.

-- Cheri Pierson Yecke, Ph.D., is Distinguished Senior Fellow for Education and Social Policy at the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.